Experiences and Trajectories with iNaturalist

General
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I posted my first observation to iNat about 3 years ago and took a relatively slow approach thereafter in posting new observations and learning the interface and the other aspects of the platform. I now feel rather comfortable using iNat, and my observation and identification frequency has picked up considerably from my initial introduction to the site.

When I started using iNat, it was primarily to satisfy personal curiosity and to test out how much I would enjoy cataloging the organisms in my local environment. I am a scientist by training (graduate school at Vandy too! #AnchorDown), but my focus and interests have always been on the cellular/molecular/biochemical level. iNat very much focuses on the macroscopic parts of the living world, and it really triggered an adjustment in my scientific curiosity and professional interest in disciplines like ecology, conservation, taxonomy, etc.

One of the biggest changes in my use of iNat has been educational. I’m a community college biology instructor, and every academic year, I teach an introductory, majors-level biology course sequence. The first semester deals primarily with molecular and cellular biology (which are very much in my wheelhouse from my undergrad and grad school training), but the second semester deals more with the macroscopic living world (surveys of plant, animal, and fungal kingdoms; ecology; etc) and that has really challenged me to learn more about these topics so that I feel as comfortable discussing them as I do something like aerobic respiration. My use of iNat has been invaluable in helping me learn more about these topics, and I now use iNat as part of a semester-long assignment in the second semester class. Students essentially have to conduct a local biological scavenger hunt in order to make a specified number of observations of different plant, animal, and fungal taxa that are part of the course curriculum. The project allows them to learn about scientific organization, local biodiversity, taxonomy, species concepts, and lots of other course-relevant information. And one of the most pleasant surprises has been my students’ use of iNat to show me new things! My students have observed species that have introduced me to projects that allow us to contribute to scientific research and really demonstrated the utility and potential of citizen science projects, e.g., PhyscoHunt.

In answer to the question about how iNat influences the way that I interact with the world around me, I think I have three things that come to mind:

  1. It really influences me to merge my scientific training and formative scientific interests (the microscopic biological world) with new interests that are centered around the macroscopic world. It causes me to see evidence of the microscopic in the macroscopic. For example, here and here. (I literally did a jump/shout for joy when I made the star jelly sighting and confirmed that it was cyanobacteria under the microscope.)

  2. It challenges me to learn new things (sometimes unexpectedly) that I can immediately pass on to my students, and in doing so, demonstrate the process of science as a continual effort to refine our knowledge about the world around us. As an example, I recently observed an unusual lichen, and the observation really spurred me to do more investigation. As a result, I had wonderful interactions with experts that outside of iNat would have been almost unreachable to me, and I had an “aha!” moment about some fundamental aspect of “textbook biology” and how it may not be as cut and dry as originally thought, i.e., the possibility of some lichens representing a parasitic symbiosis instead of the mutualism that is commonly assumed to be universal. I never would have challenged the concept (lichen mutualism), which is well outside my graduate educational training, without my experience on iNat.

  3. Take nothing for granted. About 6 months ago, I made an observation of what I thought at the time was a common treehopper. I almost didn’t upload it to iNat because I thought it was a species that I had already observed nearby in the area. As it turns out, it was a relatively rare species and the first recorded sighting of it posted to iNat! This taught me not to ignore things, no matter how “common” I think they might be.

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I got involved with iNaturalist while in training to become a Virginia Master Naturalist. That program introduced me to bioblitzing, which depends heavily on using iNaturalist as a record keeping tool. I also became familiar with the data extraction capabilities of the system. It is useful for making IDs of some organisms, not so useful for others. For example, amphibians are done well, mushrooms are not, because an accurate mushroom ID may need multiple photos, spore prints, color changes and descriptions of the surrounding substrate. These are not easy to integrate with iNaturalist. On a trip to China, we introduced the idea of citizen science and crowd sourcing to some Chinese researchers by describing how iNaturalist works. This tool didn’t seem to be available there, or at least not widely used. Hope this helps.

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Thank you to everyone for your responses! It’s fascinating to hear how people got involved with iNaturalist and how iNat has opened up new avenues for people. It’s also really heartening to see in people’s stories how supportive the iNat community has been for many. That, perhaps unsurprisingly to all of you, was something that came across really strongly throughout the strands of the study I did for my class – relationships play a central role in people’s deepening participation in the iNat community. I wanted to share this artifact of my class project with you all. The link should take you to a web I created of activities that one might engage in as a member of the iNat community, centered around the hubs of observing, building community, and identifying. From there, I imagined possible pathways of activities that one might take given particular interests. I certainly don’t claim to be an expert on iNat and am sure that both the web and the pathways could be vastly improved, revised, and expanded upon, but my goal in creating these was to make something that might provide newcomers to the iNat community with a sense of the scope of possibilities and perhaps some direction on how to engage. I’d love to hear if folks think something like this would be useful, and even more, welcome you to copy the doc and revise it as you see fit.

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Thanks for sharing your conclusions. Fascinating project!
As for my own iNat story I started by needing an ID for a weird mushroom growing in some mulch in my neighborhood “Old Man of the Woods.” Then I really got interested in identifying plants I saw on my vacation to Iceland a few years ago. I still identify plants every now and then, but after I joined a project to annotate caterpillars https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/caterpillars-of-eastern-north-america I started wondering about caterpillar parasites and I created a worldwide project for them. https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/passengers-parasites-taking-rides along the way I’ve met many other enthusiasts citizens and scientists alike who have greatly increased my desire to learn even more about this ubiquitous, but often neglected group of organisms. Have a great weekend!

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I know a Professor who studies parasites as an intersection of Genetics, Evolution, and Ecology - Professor Charles Criscione. His website has papers on the subject, if you are interested in reading them.

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I mostly use iNaturalist to document the plants and animals around me and to help others with identifying the species that they’ve seen. It’s mostly stayed that way for the time I’ve been using this site. iNat’s biggest impact on me would have to be how I pay attention and interact with the world around me. I pay more attention than ever to the natural world — for example, I take photos of unassuming plants in parking lots and driveways, things I would’ve ignored in the past.

A few weeks ago while waiting in a Starbucks drive-through, I photographed some starlings flying around a telephone pole. Without iNat, I almost certainly wouldn’t’ve paid any mind to something like that.

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Thank you. From the paper titles I see has a lot on tapeworms. I will check them out further when I can. Not having a technical background I still read scientific papers on topics of interest to glean what I can. :slightly_smiling_face: